From twpierce+usenet@mail.bsd.uchicago.edu Tue Jan 14 20:10:26 1997 Newsgroups: news.software.readers Path: fu-berlin.de!news.mathworks.com!howland.erols.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uchinews!not-for-mail From: Tim Pierce Subject: Re: munging return address to stop spam, in trn X-Nntp-Posting-Host: bio-5.bsd.uchicago.edu Message-ID: Originator: twpierce@mail.bsd.uchicago.edu (Tim Pierce) Sender: news@midway.uchicago.edu (News Administrator) X-Newsposter: Pnews 4.0-test45 (19 Oct 96) Organization: support the Equal Rights Marriage Project: 1-900-97-MARRY ($5/call) X-No-Archive: yes References: <5afnan$t8s@neonlights.uoregon.edu> <5b6k2q$t6m@neonlights.uoregon.edu> <5b7htu$ub9@neonlights.uoregon.edu> Date: Sun, 12 Jan 1997 08:13:21 GMT Lines: 58 In article <5b7htu$ub9@neonlights.uoregon.edu>, David Joslin wrote: >You knew I didn't want my e-mail address posted, >and you deliberately did it anyway. In fact, you went to some >trouble to find a different e-mail address for me, for reasons >that are still mysterious, even though there was a perfectly >good one, completely un-munged, in the header of the article >you replied to. I still have no idea what you think you were >proving. You argued here that it is important not to write down your e-mail address in machine-readable form, or the spammers will find it. What I demonstrated is that the technique is futile, since your address is *already* on the net in machine-readable form, waiting to be picked up. Frankly, I did not even check to see whether your headers already contained a legitimate address, mainly because I didn't think you would bother to foul up one address and then replicate the real one. >Yes, all of those things will happen, and additional steps >will have to be taken to make it more difficult for spammers >to spam. So what do you suggest? That we just give up, and >give the spammers all the addresses they can spam, so that >they don't have to work harder? Of course not. I am suggesting that you filter your mail in such a way as to ensure that mail sent to your Usenet address came from someone who reads Usenet, rather than someone who picked your address up out of the gutter. This .procmailrc rule has worked beautifully for me for the last several months: :0 * ^TOtwpierce\+usenet|^Received: .*twpierce\+usenet * !^References: * !^In-Reply-To: * !^Newsgroups: * !^X-Also-Posted-To: * !^X-URL: spam A few legitimate messages get filed as `spam', but only a small number, and I do check this folder periodically. >>Am I trying to be obnoxious? No. You are, and I think you should >>stop it. > >You think I'm being obnoxious because I change my reply-to address >in the header of articles I post? Seriously? I think you're being obnoxious because you're making Usenet worse under the guise of trying to make it better. Doing the right thing here isn't hard. From usenet-tag@qz.little-neck.ny.us Thu Jan 23 19:25:06 1997 Path: fu-berlin.de!news.mathworks.com!howland.erols.net!newsxfer3.itd.umich.edu!chi-news.cic.net!metro.atlanta.com!news.new-york.net!news1.netusa.net!alpha.NetUSA.Net!not-for-mail From: Eli the Bearded Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,alt.fan.e-t-b Subject: Re: [Q] procmail filtering with regexps? Date: 22 Jan 1997 20:56:13 -0500 Organization: Some absurd concept Lines: 40 Sender: eli@alpha.NetUSA.Net Message-ID: <5c6gft$7fd@alpha.NetUSA.Net> References: <5bp6db$bfo@news.fsu.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: alpha.netusa.net X-From-Notes: This is sent from a valid but tagged return address. Failure to include an "Re:" in the subject may cause reply mail to bounce. X-US-Congress: Moronic Fucks. X-get-a-newsreader: X-Save-Project-Gutenberg: X-Acceptable-Email-Policy: for rules about sending mail to this account see: -- plain text; -- html format; or -- autoresponse Justin C Lloyd wrote: >I have newly installed procmail in my personal directory (I don't have root >access in my department). I am having trouble figuring out these recipes. I >am a teaching assistant and receive programs via email. I would like to be >able to have these programs be automatically saved to files based on who they >are from and the subject. For instance, if the user smith in section 1 of the >class sends program 2, then the subject of that email is S1P2. I would like >to save this email to the file ~/cop2000/asgs/smith/asg2.cpp. Is this >possible? If necessary, I could have my students change their subject lines, >but they don't always remember use the proper subject anyway. I am not a procmail expert, but that sounds like something that can be done in twenty or thirty ways in procmail. ------ My *untested* solution ------ From=`formail -x From:` Subject=`formail -x Subject:` :0 * ^From:.*(smith|johnson|wong|czar) * ^Subject:.* S[1-9]P[1-9] { :0 ic * ? test ! -d $HOME/cop2000/asgs/$From | mkdir $HOME/cop2000/asgs/$From :0: $HOME/cop2000/asgs/$From/$Subject } ------ end ------ I personally prefer operating on addressee rather than subject, but that requires having large numbers of addresses to play with. Some setups allow delivery to username+whatever@site.tld with the text between the + and the @ arbitrary. Elijah ------ about to post my own procmail question